The IARU, International
Amateur Radio Union, satellite forum will be held in conjunction
with the AMSAT satellite conference hosted by AMSAT Canada on
Sunday 19 October 1997 from 09:00 - 12:00 at The Delta, Toronto
Airport, 801 Dixon Road, Etobicoke Toronto. Listed below are the
scheduled events.

09:00 Welcoming

09:10 IARU SATELLITE MONITORING SERVICE - YOU CAN MAKE
THE DIFFERENCE

Presented by Hans van de Groenendaal, IARU Satellite
Adviser and Member of the IARU Region I Executive
Committee

The flight model and one backup model of the SPUTNIK PS-2
"School Satellite" are in Baikonur awaiting flight
opportunity to Space Station Mir. Launch of the cargo ship
Progress M-36 is scheduled for Sunday 05-Oct-1997.

Later in October, SPUTNIK PS-2 shall be hand-released during
Extra-Vehicular Activity (EVA). The minisatellite will transmit
the original "beep-beep" with 200 mW on frequency
145.80 MHz FM in the 2m Amateur Radio Band. Battery capacity
allows operation for minimum one month.

The launch of the mini Sputnik is scheduled for October 12th,
from Mir station. The frequency will be around 145.800 MHz FM.
ANS will try to get more info about the "switch on"
time. For details see http://www.oceanes.fr/~fr5fc/spoutnik.html

On October 10/11/12 there will be "Science en fête"
event in France. Reunion Island will be active on HF and VHF (via
RS) they can be contacted via the Internet at http://www.oceanes.fr/~fr5fc/sef.html

Eddie Pettis, N5JGK informs us that he will be working AO-27
QRP/maritime mobile from the cruise ship M/S Enchanted Isle
during October 25-31, 1997. Departing out of New Orleans, N5JGK
will use GPS to determine and work rare grid square locations in
the Gulf of Mexico. Key AO-27 passes to work N5JGK are on October 26th
and 31st. Additional information can be obtained via n5jgk@aol.com

Operational. 1749 UTC pass of AO-27 today (10/5/97) one of the
control operators (KM4NZ) of AO-27 announced they were putting
the bird back in digital mode for further telemetry gathering.
The bird will return to analog on Thursday 10/9/97.

Operational. AO-10 still has strong signals but occasional
deep fading during a perigee pass over the southern US on 9/30/97
at about 3500 miles using only a 3 element linear polarized 2m
yagi without preamp. For now AO-10 looks like it's workable from
some less elaborate stations.

OSCAR-11 users are welcome to visit Clive's web site. It
contains some software for capturing data, and decoding ASCII
telemetry and WOD. There is an archive of raw data (mainly WOD)
for analysis, which is continually being expanded, as new data is
captured. The URL is http://www.users.zetnet.co.uk/clivew/.

Operational software has again been successfully loaded into
DOVE (DO-17) by the DOVE command team. WD0E started the software
at 17-Sep-97 19:40 UTC and reports it seems to be running
OK. Reports on the condition of the batteries for the next 24
hours would be appreciated. Please send them to wd0e@amsat.org. Jim reports it
remains to be seen how long the intermittent watchdog timer in
the satellite will allow this software to run. The S-band
transmitter is on to facilitate testing of S-band equipment on
the ground, particularly for those working toward P3D
S capability. Power level on the 2-meter transmitter is
about 1W day and night. Telemetry is currently being sent every
60 seconds, but this could change due to power management
needs.

Chris Jackson, G7UPN / ZL2TPO, has reloaded the Store and
Forward communications task on the UO-22 On-Board Computer. This
task includes incremental checksums which should make uploading
slightly faster. In the old task, once an upload was complete,
the spacecraft had to perform the checksum on the complete file.
Depending on the file length, this could take quite a long time.
With the new task, the checksum is computed on the fly - while
the data is actually being uploaded. Thus there is no need to
recompute it at the end of the transfer and this checksum delay
is then removed.

However, all files that were started before Chris Jackson,
G7UPN/ZL2TPO, loaded the task around 1000 UTC on the 19th
will receive a corrupt body checksum error when the upload is
completed. If the file is uploaded again, it should be accepted.
If trying to upload a large file that was started before the
above time, then start again.

If anyone gets persistent body checksum errors while uploading
files to UO-22 would they please let Chris Jackson know as soon
as possible